E-28: Sh*tting BRICS
And other things compulsive campaign staffers do in #Elxn time
In this week’s campaign round-up here on #FragmentofImagination:
- Why the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India & China) matter to #Elxn45;
- Why the US matters waaaaay more;
- Death(s), and Taxes; and,
- Retirement is over-rated.
The Home Front
Promises, Promises
The parties got out of the gate making big promises, trying to either catch or create some wind for their sails.
The week began with big duelling tax cut promises from Carney and Poilievre. The Conservatives didn’t manage a theme, or at least not a discernible one, in their first ~10 days of announcements. They did everything from taxes, to skilled trades, to promising they wouldn’t cut dental care, to fentanyl and justice. On the Liberals’ side, there were some defence policy pronouncements, free tolls on the PEI bridge, a homebuyer’s tax credit and the like. They mostly managed to stay in the Defence and Economic lanes, buttressed by Carney’s moments as PM.
The NDP was mostly in the news around its ability to maintain official party status as the squeeze on its voter base gets real - the CBC Program FrontBurner dedicated a whole podcast episode to their challenges and worries in this regard called “Is the NDP about to get wiped out?”.
Ouch.
And the Bloc leader seems to be alternating between attacking Carney, and letting Carney do his talking for him, because most times he says or does something in French it seems to help the BQ and hurt the Liberals.
I can do something you can’t do
Poilievre’s team ostensibly tried to filter all of their policy announcements through a Canada First lens this week, with less plaudits than they might have hoped. The Conservative Leader’s rallies, though, remained a topic of conversation – and Conservatives were quick to highlight rally attendance numbers and ‘sell-out’ crowds in places like London, ON and Surrey, BC.
Carney’s response? I see your big rallies, and raise you a First Minister’s Meeting, a phone call with the POTUS and the like. Carney stepping off the campaign trail - or ‘pausing’ his campaign, as his office likes to say - to do the PM’s job has a reinforcing effect that the Conservative leader has no real answer to, or ability to compare or contrast with.
Retirement is for schmucks
Many Liberal MPs were choosing to ‘spend more time with family’, taking a run at other jobs like Mayor or in provincial politics, or just tapping-out as the Liberals’ ~25-point deficit in the polls persisted and Trudeau insisted he would lead the party into the next election.
Anita Anand announced she was out, before reversing herself and announcing she would run again. In Nova Scotia Andy Fillmore ran for, and won, the Mayoralty of Halifax Regional Municipality, and Sean Fraser left his role as Minister-who-can-fix-problem-files-with-a-smile. Fraser was called off the retirement bench one day into the writ period when Carney paid a visit to Nova Scotia after Carney prevailed on him to do it for Canada.
Former Cabinet Minister, turned BMO Vice Chair in 2019, Scott Brison took the extraordinary step of announcing he was taking a leave from his banking role to help on the campaign. It was peculiar – although maybe not if you know Scott. Most of the former senior Cabinet Ministers from either party who choose to help their former tribe are encouraged to do so, and manage to ‘volunteer’ without having to inform the world about it. It’s a sign of the Liberals’ momentum swing that so many former leading lights want you to know that they’re back on the scene to help out.
Candidate eruptions
They’ve started, in earnest. The closer we get to the April 7th nomination deadline, after which parties cannot swap-out a blown-tire of a candidate for one with some air and less PR punctures, expect to see more information ‘drop’ on candidates for whom there was a #vettingfail or a #frontallobemishap of some sort.
The Liberals’ Paul Chiang in Toronto was under fire for comments about turning over his Conservative political opponent to the Chinese consulate…for cash. For ~48 hours, Carney is stood by the candidate, which led some strategists to question why he would waste a smidgen of political capital when the party has time to replace him. In Saint John, NB, meanwhile, the Conservative HQ angered local candidates by appointing an out-of-province nominee to face off against the maverick Liberal MP Wayne Long.
Expect to see an uptick in the brown envelopes, revealed tweets and other ‘bombshells’ (most of which will be more like fizzling cake sparklers) on candidates after the nominations close and taking down a candidate may cost a party an otherwise safe seat.
The Foreign Desk: Foreign Agents, Assassinations, and Moles
For our purposes here, re: ‘Foreign Countries’, I’ll call the U.S.’s role in Canada an “inter-mestic” one; not 100% international or domestic, as a former U.S. State Department bureaucrat once told me they considered the Canada-U.S. relationship.
The Chinese consulate matter around Paul Chiang isn’t the only way a foreign country is playing a role in #elxn45 – or China, itself, for that matter. Last week it was reported that 4 Canadians were put to death by the Chinese government for drug-related offences.
Reports around interference from India, China and Russia have circulated in the media after a warning from Canadian officials. This followed stories early in the campaign that Poilievre’s 2022 leadership bid might have been subject to Indian interference and gave fresh legs to the stories about his refusal to gain a security clearance in Canada to be briefed on foreign interference efforts.
My friend, and former undergraduate classmate, Dr. Lori Turnbull is one of Canada’s most respected public policy professors – and she had this to say to The Guardian about the matter:
“It’s very weird, because I can’t imagine, from a political perspective, why it’s worth it. I have top-secret clearance, it’s not that hard,” said Lori Turnbull, the director of Dalhousie University’s school of public administration. “It’s very hard for me to get my mind around why a leader who wants to be prime minister would not go ahead and do this. To give your rival something like that, for free, is stupid when you’re fighting a close election.”
Preach.
It’s debatable
The non-partisan Debate Commission today issued its invitations to the Party Leaders – 5 of them – to participate in the mid-April debates. It was looking for a hot minute there like the Green Party may not have made the cut for this year’s leader’s debates. The Debate Commission has three thresholds – only two of which a party needs to cross – in order to qualify to participate.
The Liberal resurgence has pushed the NDP down, and the Greens, too, in opinion polling – and pushed the Greens below the required 4% threshold of vote intention. The party managed to fill out its slate and nominate dozens of candidates on Monday – many of which are likely to be known as NOB’s (Names on Ballot), in political parlance.
To be fair, they’re not the only party with NOBs nominated, every party has political deserts in which a willing and stalwart party member agrees to carry the banner to allow them to have a full slate of candidates. This was, perhaps, most famously brought to the fore in the Orange Wave of 2011, when Jack Layton’s NDP surged into official opposition status by electing dozens of Quebec MPs, some of whom weren’t even in the country for a good part of the election.
Although May’s long experience and - to an extent, savvy - means she would have been a solid presence in debates, the party decided that her co-leader Jonathan Pedneault would be the “singular face” of the party in the campaign and debates. This means there will be no female leader on stage for either leadership debate this election - for the first time since 2011.
This outcome likely frustrated the Conservatives, since they must share the time with one more leader in each debate. If they’d still been running in front, they would have likely warmed to a situation where smaller parties got some airtime and their front-runner was less on the hot seat.
Dude, where’s my car?
Ummm, maybe it’s stuck in Customs; did you pay the tariff bill?
I visited an old friend this weekend, who lives in Southern California (but, of course, proudly displays his Canadian flag, and blasts The Hip). His spouse is American and is one of the numerous folks I met across three US cities over the last week who want us all to know it’s not them doing all this sabre-rattling and annexation-threatening stuff, they love Canadians (often, literally).
I was struck by something they said, as we drove down the highway in their new car smelling Honda. They’d decided to bite the bullet and buy new last December, maybe before they were completely ready, to get ahead of Spring Tariffs they were sure would come. And, last week, POTUS 45/47 made good on that threat to impose tariffs on foreign Automobiles.
Tomorrow, he’s likely to impose more tariffs on what he’s taken to calling Liberation Day. The only thing he may be Liberating (in the short-term anyway) are Pierre Poilievre’s hopes of a major comeback (I know, I know, it’s weird when the guy who was the massive house-money favourite only ~8 weeks ago is now the one trying to mount a comeback). Economists in the US forecast more economic pain, a likely recession, and serious consumer backlash to paying the cost of their own supposed Liberation.
If – when – he imposes more tariffs on Canada, he will continue to provide Mark Carney with the ability to have us all think “Prime Minister Mark Carney” more often than “Liberal Leader Mark Carney” because like a bad tennis partner he keeps on serving up lob ball opportunities for Carney to step off the campaign trail and do his day job…a job it becomes harder and harder to see Poilievre doing if the guy doing it right now is doing even a half-passable job of it.
What I’ll be watching for this week:
- Tariffs: Tomorrow might feel like Déjà vu, all over again. Given the jerkiness of the on-again-paused-again-on-again Trump Tariffs, it’s likely there will be more on and off action as the week progresses. Some companies – most particularly lumber producers – are likely to start making announcements about production reductions, or downtime, in response to the tariffs. This will have the temptation of shifting the centre of gravity from Southwest Ontario and the auto sector – even if only briefly – to rural Canada and resource-dependent communities.
- Conservatives’ (at war?) Room: The Conservative party has had some high-profile advice from its own top strategists about how badly off course they are. The indomitable
author and journalist, Justin Ling, had a piece on just how right Kory Teneycke (Doug Ford’s Campaign Manager, former Harper staffer, etc) was in his diagnosis of the rigor mortis setting in to a formerly cruising Conservative campaign. If the public poll numbers don’t tighten up, Poilievre doesn’t catch a break, or their campaign doesn’t turn their proverbial guns on DT…(“knock it off, Donald” – what even is that?), expect Teneycke to be joined by other grumbly Conservatives with advice from the sidelines.- Gas price drops: The removal of the consumer carbon tax/price on pollution means that gas prices across the country are likely to drop significantly this week. Any opportunity for the Conservatives to do an Axe the Tax victory lap to try and remind Canadians they would still be paying such a tax – and an escalating one at that – will be overshadowed by Tariff talk and related handwringing.
Have a great week.
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